Nobody, Not Even the Rain
by mad-and-moonly
Summary: What would happen if Peggy had taken Stan up on his offer of coffee in the Season 6 premiere? Stan-Peggy pairing. Potential future chapters.
1. Coffee, Cabs, and Cannabis

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M (FOR DRUG USE, LANGUAGE, AND SPICY CONTENT)**

All of the characters belong to AMC. (I just make them do things the writers should have made them do)

* * *

_somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond _

_any experience,your eyes have their silence: _

_in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, _

_or which i cannot touch because they are too near _

_your slightest look easily will unclose me_

_ though i have closed myself as fingers, _

_you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens _

_(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose _

_or if your wish be to close me, i and _

_my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,_

_ as when the heart of this flower imagines _

_the snow carefully everywhere descending; _

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals _

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_ compels me with the color of its countries, _

_rendering death and forever with each breathing _

_(i do not know what it is about you that closes _

_and opens;only something in me understands_

_ the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) _

_nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands_

-e.e. cummings

* * *

"God this place is horrible." Stan shook his head in half amused bafflement .

The crinkles that radiated from the corner of his eyes appeared and disappeared in the moment his laughter turned into a series of coughs. He struggled to regain his composure, fiddling with one of the coffee stained coasters that were haphazardly thrown onto the table of each booth in the dilapidated excuse of a diner.

"I can't believe shitholes like this one are allowed to operate, ya know?"

At that point he pivoted his gaze from where it had rested on some indefinable point just outside the plate glass windows. The night was typical of New York winters-week old dirt clogged snow was banked waist high against the aging brownstones. He'd looked as if he were scanning the darkness for someone. The lack of taxis was evidence of how late it was.

Mechanically Peggy lifted her wrist . Checking the time came as second nature to her now.

2:19.

She' d been holed up in her office for, what, eighteen hours? A dull ache fogged her mind. Tapping her fingers on the chipping green and pink linoleum of the booth's counter, she answered.

"Well, it's an old place. It's been here since the thirties or something."

In a haze of tiredness and mental fatigue, she allowed her eyes to roam over Stan, taking in the worn leather of the coat he wore-a faded woolen blue pullover peeked out of the space he'd unzipped his jacket. Smiling to himself, his teeth stood like straight white picket fenceposts in a tangle of dried grass. At least Ginsberg had fared worse- she'd seen the travesty he called a mustache. So the beard bet had gone down- it was obvious who'd won. The beard suited him; in her opinion at least. The field of blond contrasted beautifully with the red pout of his mouth.

An unclearable lump formed in the back of her throat. She removed her hat. As usual, Stan was laughing again. Peggy placed the yellow tam on the table- careful to avoid the small spot of grease pooled at the corner.

"The thirties, huh?"

Again he turned to the window.

"I guess that's why they called it the Depression."

For a moment his mouth set grimly in a line- his profile stoic. Peggy shifted in the creaky vinyl seat, uncomfortable with the change that had suddenly washed over him. He'd been lapsing into these little maudlin episodes all night.

Hey, he was the one that said she needed a break from work. He'd asked her out to coffee. And here she was, supplying every conversational topic she could pluck from the insociable dryness of her overtired brain. And then it hit her.

"Are you high?"

He stared back it her with eyes that were impossibly green- she'd never dared to drive past Poughkeepsie, but she'd imagined the deepest brine pools of the Pacific would look a lot like this- a maelstrom of gold and sea green, dotted with shadows of navy. Slightly glassed over, they were watery enough to draw her attention. Was the red rimming his eyelids due to tiredness, or something more.. . chemical? His eye contact was unnerving- his fixation on her face wouldn't waver.

She considered repeating herself, this time with more fire, and had opened her mouth to do so just as he replied- still staring.

"As a kite."

Unconsciously she squirmed in her wool coat, and finding it suddenly confining she shimmied out of it. She faced him squarely- determined to speak with him about the one thing that cleared her mind without fail.

"So, how's the Creative Department over at Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce doing?"

She punctuated each of the partners' names with a wave of her hand. Elbows on the table, her hands supported her chin.

"Are they hitting the grass as hard as you are?"

Stan's red tinged gaze returned to whatever was so interesting outside. She immediately regretted lecturing him. Hell, she was his friend, not his mother.

"Whatever keeps you going, I guess."

Peggy attempted to keep her tone light- jovial.

"I believe congratulations are in order. You guys finally snagged Jaguar."

Stan continued to stare outside.

"Did Don tell you about my new project? Philip Morris has this ladies cigarette, and Chaough's gonna have me name it. I've pretty much been running the department over there. All of these college kids are my underlings, and they're... Inexperienced, you know? Unmotivated. It's nothing like when I was in Creative scrambling to finish all of Don's dirty work."

The words had tumbled from her mouth in a rush. She stared into the cold black tar that the diner served as coffee until her vision blurred. Slipping her fingers through the chipping handle of the diner's mug, she curved her hand around it as if searching to pull some warmth from the muck it contained. They remained like this for some time- each lost in thought. Staring into a cup and out of a window. An ancient radio droned out Silver Bells in the background. Bing Crosby's mellow baritone was nearly drowned out in a fuzzy staticky mess of sound. For some reason Peggy found the vagueness soothing. Her yawn jolted Stan from whatever recess of his mind he was mired in. For such a sporty looking guy he often fell into the role of the stereotypical creative type- his rollicking emotional highs were always accompanied by subsequent lachrymose lows.

Emboldened by some nameless instinct, she grabbed his hand. The palm was more calloused than she'd expected- years of handshakes with the trust fund babies that were her clients and infrequent tumbles with college boys hadn't exactly prepared her for hand contact with him. But the top surface of his hand was deliciously soft; covered in wiry blond-brown hairs and heavily veined. It was much larger than hers, and tanned from his outdoor summers at that lake he always ranted about. She considered letting go, but was surprised when his fingers wrapped tentatively around hers. A familiar twisting pulled in her stomach when the stormy sea green of his eyes met her baby blues.

Driven temporarily witless by the soft circles his thumb gently stroked into the pulse jumping in her wrist, she decided to risk making a fool of herself.

"You have any more of that stuff?"

They exchanged lopsided smiles as he nodded slowly. Peggy scanned the diner with mild disgust- the grease spattered kitchen tile, that roach on the floor she'd mistaken for an almond.

"Then you wanna get outta here?"

Stan gave her no time to wait for his response, instead tossing her hat onto her head and reaching for her coat. He tugged her to her feet and towards the exit. The tinkle of the bells attached to it heralded their entrance into the frigid New York streets, and his voice was a throaty rumble that fogged the glass door before he pushed it open.

"I've been lookin' for cabs all night."

* * *

They never did find a cab, and since Peggy's place was the closest, they decided to hoof it for her apartment. The night air was frigid. Peggy blew into her thin yellow gloves to warm her stiffening fingers. Stan slammed his large hand over her head- saving the tiny hat she wore from an errant gust of wind.

"Ow!"

Peggy protested through the same smile that often visited Stan in his dreams.

"What the hell was that?"

"Oh, shut up, peewee."

She was at least a head shorter than him, although the confident bounce that she added to each step gave the impression she was inches taller. The advanced hour made it seem as if the two of them were truly alone in the world. He was no stranger to the wet and icy solitude of a New York night perched on the cusp of morning. He considered pulling her to him- wrapping her in the musty warmness of his overcoat but decided against it. He didn't want to fuck up in case he'd misread things. This silence was comfortable. It sure was superior to the tension filled quiet at the diner.

Peggy counted the number of blocks they'd walked aloud- afraid they might miss her apartment building if she didn't. Stan ceased to be shocked at how unafraid she was. She walked home alone nearly every night without giving the sickos and muggers that the Village crawled with the slightest thought. She'd left Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce without so much as a look over her shoulder- giving them all her five foot two ass to kiss. Peggy Olsen had little tolerance for cowards.

How much of a coward was he that he couldn't say something as simple as "I want you."?

Deftly he reached for her hand. She didn't react adversely, and he was startled again at the smallness of her gloved hand in his. Reverently, he held it, as if it were a sparrow with brittle bones and a heart he strove not to crush. Multicolored Christmas lights twinkled on the stoop of a brownstone that stood out as a bit cleaner and generally less haggard than the others. Before Peggy managed to reach for her keyring, he knew. This had to be her apartment. A silver tinsel wreath rustled in the pealing wind, and Peggy led Stan up onto the stairs of her front stoop, letting go of his hand to rummage the cavern of her pocketbook for her keys.

At length She found them and turned the lock, ushering him in. "This is home." she said quietly- her voice hardly broke a whisper. It was nice and small... Homey. Most importantly it was warm. One large window overtook the majority of the far wall. Her bed lay rumpled and unmade against it. Stacks of albums dominated the living room, and a rickety record player that obviously wasn't hers stood obnoxiously large against the wall opposite the bed. Stan shut the door behind him- watching her lick the flushed pink of her lips and wishing she'd let him do it for her.

Peggy flicked on the lights and kicked off her ankle torturing pumps on her way to the kitchenette. She called to him from behind the small partition. He'd only eaten four saltines in the diner- Peggy had counted each of the two packets and watched the white squares disappear into his mouth. "Sit down! You want a drink or food or something? We've got this peach stuff. I know you don't like sweet drinks, but times are tight with me working and Abe..." He bristled slightly at the mention of his rival. "... well being Abe." For a moment she'd been swept up in the domesticity of it- the archetypal woman-rewards-her-man-with-a-hard-earned-drink thing that her clients ate up and that she had come to loathe.

Assuming his silence to be the most polite decline he could muster, she closed the sticking refrigerator door with an accidental bang and was greeted with the countless newspaper articles Abe routinely posted. Whether they were intended merely to inform or as penance she couldn't confidently say. The mottled avocado green of the Frigidaire was awful enough without having to live through Phnom Penh and escalation each time she reached for milk; the few rushed breakfasts she managed at home she spent contemplating the ethical repercussions of napalm over Cheerios.

These quiet nights alone still retained some semblance of solace. And it seemed the scant moments she snatched from work and life with Abe were spent venting over the phone to Stan. So when he'd asked her to coffee she'd accepted- immediately. With him she could forget about Koss and Chaough and that infuriating snip in accounting. If Abe thought it best to beleaguer his friends with tales of his unhappiness- the so called artists and thinkers that openly disdained her brand of creativity- so be it. Drifting among them she felt no true camaraderie. And Stan served as a balm for her alienation from... well everything.

In a world where most men saw only a nuisance and most women saw a man in nylons and a skirt to him she was just human.

She returned to the living room, holding some contraption made of a plastic bottle with a curving pipe mouthpiece attached to it.

"What the hell is that thing?"

Waving her lighter she beamed at the look of utter incredulity on his face.

"Just gimme those joints and I'll show you."

She plopped beside him on the couch, incredibly conscious of the way his body brushed against her ribs as she leaned over him. His eyes were hooded- as if he were incredibly sleepy- and his nostrils flared as her breasts pressed against his arm. Stan's bulk didn't fit well into the confines of her tacky plaid patterned loveseat.

"This sofa's a tad small." she offered lamely.

"Wanna move this party over?"

Peggy gestured toward the bed; fully expecting him to decline, half hoping he would stop her from potentially destroying the only companionship she could tolerate in her life right now. He rose to his feet, towering over her where she sat, legs crossed, wishing.

In two loping steps he crashed onto her mattress, the unmade bed creaked loudly and the bedposts thudded through the floor. Pink faced and grinning, he watched her erupt into cackles.

"It's almost..." she raised her wrist to her eyes "...four in the morning. And I do have, ya know, neighbors."

He merely rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in her blankets and emitting a long groan that produced another pull in hers. His voice was a mumble further distorted by her comforter.

"Are we gonnta mmbboke erwut?"

The cadence of a question wasn't lost on her. She just didn't have the slightest idea what he'd said.

"What?"

He raised his head slowly- a rough burning she hadn't noticed before darkened his eyes. And she realized they were as green and as welcome as the spring she pined for- the spring that would break this eternal winter she'd lived through for the past five years.

"Are we going to smoke, or what?"

"Oh, uh, yeah." she distractedly stammered.

Her bed wasn't much roomier than her couch; she'd be pressed just as closely to him with only the benefit of her legs being supported by her mattress. She smirked- a facial posture that was as natural to her as breathing- and braced herself for contact. So they'd be a little too close for comfort?

Good.

* * *

She was always cute. But there was no comparison to when she was high. Stan had lost count of the hits he'd taken from this weirdo bottle machine thing. Minutes before, when his head was a mite clearer he'd asked her.

"So is it like a hookah or something?"

Her face was wreathed in wispy smoke; her eyelashes cast shadows on the apples of her cheeks.

"What's that?" she had asked. The slight slur in her speech was counteracted by her impressive volume.

Laughingly he shushed her, reminding her of the neighbors she couldn't wake, and slid closer. Propped up against the headboard, he debated pulling her body flush with his. Curled at the foot of the bed, her stockinged feet tucked beneath her, she lounged completely unaware of the direction of his thoughts. Her eyes were fixed on him with all the cannabis induced softness but none of the dullness. They were bright, reflective ice blue pools with starkly contrasting pupils.

He shook himself.

"Yeah. So. You know how I told you about the old St. Francis days." She nodded a little too violently. A jerking motion that sent her hair bobbing on her head.

"Well this old professor, Marnet, French guy... Well Marnet always had us doing these projects to make us, I dunno. More acquainted with the limitless wonders of the world or something."

Intently, she listened.

"And one of mine was about Morocco. So you know I was thinking about cartoons or some girl I'd see that weekend or a lacrosse game or something, and I mostly rushed through it."

He fiddled with a thread that hung loose from the blanket.

Wrapped it tightly around his finger. Unwrapped it.

"But Marnet saw some sketch I'd scratched out of some Berbers watching sheep graze in a mountainside or something."

"And he old bastard said 'Thees ees incrayabluh!' His imitation of a French accent catapulted Peggy into a fit of raucous giggles. At the foot of the bed she rolled, clutching her stomach and gasping for air. Stan completely lost his train of thought and joined her in laughing- comforted by the fact that rather than laughing at his expense she always laughed with him. Despite their initial friction, their friendship had grown in a way he had never anticipated. He needed these conversations to get him through the day- needed someone to commiserate with over all the unbelievable shit Don and the other partners pulled daily. He needed someone who he could talk to about his shitty childhood that wouldn't pass judgment or do anything but listen.

Her head bobbed gently with each word he said- each deep secret he mumbled to her as if it were nothing.

He laid stretched out fully in a chemical haze of memory and meditation; riveted as Peggy turned onto her back and raised her legs to peel off her stockings.

Riveted as she drowsily crawled up to lay beside him; her knees denting small furrows into her oversoft mattress.

Riveted as her hands found his face in the softly breaking daylight that made her skin and every surface around them glow periwinkle.

Peggy tugged his beard gently- shyly poked her fingers through the nest of hair he'd grown as a bet with Ginsberg- and ran her thumb over the skin heating beneath it.

"Hey. What's the story behind this?"

Stan lay unable to breathe, his lungs constricted and desperate to heave a sigh yet refusing lest his breath ruffle her hair; she was so close. Confident that this time she wouldn't turn him away, he placed his hands carefully on the small of her back as if this were a middle school dance- as if she would shatter knowing all the while she was the unflappable woman with a backbone made of iron. His fingers itched to trace the curve of her spine without the confines of clothes.

And when bravery at last found him her lips trembled finely beneath his. And once he finally trusted his hands to gently remove her blouse, and later her skirt he murmured against a her lips- parted and wet and swollen from his kisses- that he'd told her that story before. And Peggy laughed in admission, gasping and writhing as his fingers pressed persistently between her legs and willing herself not to disturb the neighbors as her closest friend mastered her body.


	2. Detox, Donuts, and Debbie

**THIS CHAPTER IS ALSO RATED M (FOR DRUG USE, LANGUAGE, AND MORE OF THAT SPICY CONTENT)**

All of the characters belong to AMC. (The writers are enraging me right now.)

This chapter is a little more explicit. Not safe for work, school, or family dinners.

* * *

Usually Peggy entered relationships with a sense of evil foreboding. It was like a gift. She had a knack for determining a few dates in how she felt about a guy. By then they'd slip up- reveal some character deficiency she'd pinpoint and then use to chip away at the rosy impression she'd initially formed of them. Only once she found the proverbial chink in their armor did she rest- content that when things inevitably went south she could say she'd known all along.

It was different with Stan.

She knew how awful he could be firsthand- that he was crass, and arrogant and harboring an addiction she found more hilarious than troubling. He called her a fruitcake; criticized her undesirable body. He'd pull shit like letting her walk into a meeting with lipstick covered teeth or accusing her of farting in front of half of her staff.

So she'd been confused when he began to see her as someone he could confide in; when he'd deflect the barrage of insults from her to Ginsberg, or let her in on his theories concerning the identity of Don's next wife (she was hoping it'd be a boyfriend to confirm a longstanding suspicion). She was confused when his namecalling became less caustic and more playful. So she'd been confused out of her mind a few hours ago when Stan was thrusting into her gently, rasping into the shell of her ear that she was beautiful, that he'd wanted her for so long, constantly asking if he was hurting her.

The other names she could handle.

When he was cradling her as if she were made of paper and he was calling her baby she'd taken it as her first hint to run. So why was she lying here- awake while Stan slept with his arm draped over her waist- missing work but hardly caring and smiling to herself like a fool?

Right about now she didn't give a damn what Chaough'd say- Miss Olson deserved a personal day.

The afternoon sun harshly lit the day outside, peeking so brightly at the edges of her curtains that Peggy was sure new snow had fallen and coated the city in a uniform and blinding white. Outside a winter of wet asphalt and icy brick winter awaited her- not to mention the world of deadlines and photoshoots she was shirking.

Stan's chest rose and fell where he lay pressed close behind her, warming her neck and shoulderblades. Slowly- carefully to avoid waking him- she turned to face the comfort of his eyes and was instead greeted by a wall of chest.

She'd forgotten for a moment how tall he was- that face to face her shins would mingle with his thighs. So she wiggled her way upward- struggling in his vice grip in as few movements as possible only satisfied when his beard was level with her forehead. She craned her neck back to look at him- amazed at the creature that was Stan in repose.

She had an excellent view of the inside of his nostrils.

His breaths were half snores and his mouth was parted and slightly slack. His hair was disheveled and mussed into a tangle of honey blond waves that poked out from his head in all directions. His collarbones jutted out from his chest at a sharp angle before leading to his shoulders, to the arms that encircled her, and to his hands that rhythmically stroked up and down her back- the calloused palms scraping long strokes along the length of her body.

Stan was awake, an enigmatic smile playing across his lips.

Her heart thudded, racing with the realization that this was no fairytale. This was real life complete with careers, and taxes, and boyfriends that could be home at any minute; that the two of them had crossed the fragile threshold that separates friends from lovers. A familiar anxiety crept up- that this would end the same way her other forays into the mire of physical intimacy had.

She knew all too well how Stan felt about the other women he slept with.

He took relish in describing his encounters in gory detail. All of his descriptions were crude- entirely bereft of respect and anatomical enough to make Ginsberg cringe. Flaws she found trivial he ruthlessly dissected. From lopsided nipples to quaking thighs to hair in places he very vocally thought women shouldn't be hairy; he spared them no criticism.

Absently, she wondered what he thought. Last night she hadn't been shy.

Neither had Stan.

He'd choked out a few broken sentences- generously fraught with profanity- that left her reeling even through the haze of her pot addled mind.

She avoided his eyes as his hands slid lower and all around her blanked in a flood of sensation. Stan blanketed her with his bulk; surrounding and shielding her from the chilly creep of air that resulted from her neglecting to switch on the bedroom's radiator.

His breaths were harsh and uneven, glowing against the hawkish bite of winter.

He cupped her ass to pull her upward and she palmed his chest- grabbing at him as if scrambling for purchase and he stopped. Avoiding eye contact, she focused her gaze downward only to inadvertently take in his chapped lips- the mouth that could undo her, and her entire body blazed into an almost painful blush. Stricken breathless, her eyes reflexively flicked to his. They glowed a shimmering sage green in the afternoon sunlight; the fathomless blackness of his pupils functioning as lenses to refract his smile. Some trembling emotion shivered in them and again she looked away; this time over his shoulder into her closet wishing that he wouldn't say anything and grateful when he didn't.

Instead he kissed her hungrily.

His mouth crashed onto hers and she was drowning- helpless to do anything but moan hoarsely as his tongue massaged hers. She fisted her shaking hands in his hair as an ache grew at the juncture of her thighs and she willed herself not to cry out. For what felt like hours he dominated the kiss; palming her backside and roughly pulling her to him.

Only after overcoming the initial shock did she return his fervor- nipping at his bottom lip eliciting a taut growl from Stan and a headspinning whirl of vertigo as he pulled her on top of him. Stan's fingers swirled low on her stomach and Peggy's eyes screwed shut as they ventured lower, arcing white flashes flaring behind her eyelids when he touched her,_ there_.

He was hard against her bellybutton and staring up at her with what (if she dared to open her eyes) she'd call adoration. She straddled him, unable to control the sensations roiling inside of her and struggling to suppress the flood of happiness that only he had the ability to unbridle. An accidental giggle bubbled out of her and he laughed in kind, lifting a hand to run it through her hair. The pads of his fingers circled at the nape of her neck, causing her to sag against him drowsily, and only once her mouth latched onto the sinew connecting his neck to his shoulder did he drop his hands to his sides. Sharply, he halted emitting a strangled groan as she peppered his jaw with openmouthed kisses- covered her smile with his.

The rocking of Stan's chest heaving beneath her was both unsettling and right.

And once he caught his breath the roll of his voice was a languid tickle in her ear.

"Morning, piggy."

He snorted. He'd waited so long to use that one

* * *

"Oink oink."

Stan ducked just in time to avoid the notebook that Peggy launched at his head. Her hair was still damp from their shower; her brows furrowed and her eyes flashed with barely constrained rage.

"Quit it!"

She rummaged through another of the various heaps of clothes littering her bedroom floor- a frantic concern marring her features. Scrambling on hands and knees she lifted rugs and hurriedly opened and closed drawers before before looking up where Stan leaned in the doorway.

His heart stilled at the panic in her eyes. And again, despite himself, he wanted her.

"This isn't funny! Is this it?"

She held up a blue sweater that was clearly two sizes too small.

"A turtleneck?" He cocked his head to the side in mock incredulity.

"Oh yeah." She tossed it over her shoulder where it landed in a rumpled pile of sundresses.

"That's definitely Abe's."

Her exasperation was adorable.

"You know," she bit out through gritted teeth. "You could come and help me."

No thanks. Anything that involves you and me, and floors, and well, kneeling..."

He trailed off.

Or sustained eye contact for that matter.

The two of them locked gazes- remembering.

Stan was the first to break it- to drag in a swallow of the air that inexplicably thickened- and turned his attention instead to noting what a wreck her room was in the sobering light of day.

Yeah, she was just flinging articles of clothing left and right looking for his pullover, but those pantyhose had been decorating that lampshade the entire time he'd been here. Paperbacks had rained down onto his head at multiple points last night. And...

"What the hell is that?" He pointed to what looked like a child's head connected to a tank with fireworks made of newsprint in the background all haphazardly slapped onto a canvas.

"What?" She turned in the direction his finger was pointed.

"Oh that's a... a collage... a mixed media... Uh..."

Helplessly she scanned the immediate area for blue wool.

"It's Abe's okay."

Stan's face was beet-red with constrained laughter.

"It's... It's horrible." He wheezed, overcome.

"Well, the two of you can whoop it up over Abe's obviously shitty art when he comes home in a few minutes."

He balked. Peggy was serious.

"Hey. I'll come back for it. Just drop it off at work or something."

Already formulating a comeback about how his sensitive nipples would suffer in an overcoat without a snuggly barrier he stopped.

Blankly, she stared at him. He couldn't fathom why she'd be so angry.

"Yes. Excellent idea, Stan. I'll just march up to the reception desk and hand Meredith the shirt that you somehow managed to lose in my presence."

Rigidly, she stood- eyes narrowed and hardened to slits of blue agate and then widening- imploring.

He'd witnessed this same transformation before- on days when she'd been holed up in her office too long and had unsuccessfully grappled for the Creative Department's attention or when Don was riding her ass about a deadline and he and Ginsberg left to get burgers while she worked into the night.

He knew that this impotence irked her the most- that she wanted to scream for respect and recognition while understanding that doing so would have the opposite intended effect- that the partners would regret their decision in placing a woman over a department the second she acted rashly. There was a point when caving in to those she was supposed to supervise was all she could do to preserve the fragile financial independence she'd sold her soul to attain- when a diplomatic display of weakness was preferable to losing everything.

A vague and disquieting hurt trickled into him- settling somewhere in a recess of his chest and sticking there.

"How the hell does that look to you?" Her eyes flitted around the wreckage of her bedroom, defeat dimming her voice.

For a millisecond he feared she would cry, and that in rushing to comfort her he'd really give old Abe a show. He sensed her calling to him nonverbally, but he had to get out of here before the Second Coming of Jesus showed up.

Stan restrained himself. He quarantined himself to the doorway to avoid crossing the sea of clothes where she stood; silhouetted by the cooling golden light that filtered through the curtains signifying the approaching nightfall.

Knowing full well that a kiss goodbye would result in disaster he pulled on his overcoat stifling a sigh that, if he'd breathed it, would communicate more than his words ever could.

He couldn't look at her.

"I'll get it later somehow."

A pang of finality assailed him.

"We'll find a way, Peggy."

He hadn't anticipated her following him to the door. She had trailed a few paces behind him, an obvious soreness slowing her steps before they paused in the small vestibule.

In an uncharacteristic display of tact, he didn't comment.

Stan knew she was an arm's length away and naked under her sundress.

Her tone was firm- the same tone she used with men who she was positive would not listen.

"Stan. No one can know."

* * *

Peggy paced her apartment oddly for hours- toes turned out and lifting each foot high in the air before gingerly lowering it. Nothing she'd experienced compared to the memory of moving to circle her hand around the length of him and finding that her fingertips didn't connect.

During a lukewarm bath that was intended to soothe the discomfort, but instead made her antsy the moment she heard a whistling Abe shuffle into the kitchen, she decided to brave the outdoors. Peggy ducked her head beneath the water; the incessant clacking of his typewriter keys ringing in her ears and counted to ten.

She'd discovered a balled up wad of a sweater just in time to escape to the bathroom.

In twenty minutes she was out of the door and waddling like a penguin down Lexington- acutely aware of each and every swatch of pebbling skin she hadn't thoroughly towelled down in the gusty January evening.

Two days ago she had entered 1968 with her boyfriend's arm slung around her shoulder sore from an affair she was having with her best friend.

Well, one infidelity is certainly a paltry excuse of an affair.

Like a miracle, a cab materialized the minute her toes began to feel icy, and she hurried into its belly breathing into her fingers the way she'd seen doormen do and plopped into the backseat.  
"Where to?" the baldpated head in the mirror sized up her reflection and then turned to the small pale face that supplied it, graying brows raised in impatient query.

It was an excellent question. One to which, at the moment, she had no definite answer.

She'd begin with the place second highest on Abe's ever expanding corporate blacklist.

"Woolworth's, please."

"You meetin' somebody?"

His prying rankled her. She infused her tone with barbs of impatience; enunciating each syllable as if he hadn't heard.

"Wool-worth's"

Jeez, she hadn't meant to hiss. But it did the job. The driver grabbed at the clutch as if it had offended him, pulling out from the curb and into the fare-bloating six o clock traffic.

A sneaking sadness enveloped her. She'd ventured out of her apartment feeling pure and clean and prepared to face the world outside of the four walls that housed the ghosts of memories; ghosts that lurked in sweet smelling smoke and poplin bedsheets and manifested as unbidden twinges in her stomach.

Fifth Avenue slithered by just outside the glass with pampered wives exercising pampered Pomeranians. The faraway world of the carelessly wealthy was as false and alien as a terrarium. Its inhabitants laughed it up over gin highballs and the bloody spoils of the proleteriat.

She was becoming Abe by osmosis, and for a moment she did not resent him. She did not hate him although whatever magnetism had flared between them sputtered and was dying, filling her mouth with the taste of damp cinders.

"Wool-worth's."

Peggy decided to ignore the cabby's mocking imitation instead offering a smile she hoped was more placating than sinister and tossing five dollars into his waiting hand.

Brusquely, she thanked him and headed for the least crowded of the glass eggbeaters that served as Woolworth's doors. She avoided the entrance to Housewares that was packed with frazzled women taking advantage of the post holiday sales.

She entered at Mechanics and made a beeline for the lacquered pinkness of Cosmetics. She'd replace her hairbrush first- the silky auburn hairs between the bristles had somehow become crisscrossed with strands of rough gold, and a memory of Stan's beard brushed to shining post shower lay in them.

Item by item she'd eradicate the evidence. Erasing the memory of that night was self-preservation. Whatever had passed between them skimmed too close to the pith of her. The wound Stan opened had to close, and fast.

A chipper saleswoman appeared out of nowhere, balancing a tray of perfumes and blocking Peggy's path.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" she piped.

Ugh. Since when was she a ma'am?

She sidestepped her none too politely. The perfume bottles teetered like bowling pins and out of spite Peggy wished they would drop.

"No thanks. I know exactly where I'm going."

* * *

"Oh my God."

If the IRS mailed Michael Ginsberg a ten dollar bill for each of the times in his twenty-five years that he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to then he'd sure as hell quit this deadbeat job.

There was that time when he was fourteen and had walked into his aunt Yulia's kitchen after she'd made a convert of his cousin's fiancée only to witness an impromptu circumcision, for instance. Or the time he'd been apprenticed as a butcher until he saw what was actually in sausage. But what could prepare him for this?

His blood thrummed in his veins as Stan sat, slumped facedown at the Creative Department's table of choice with his palms flattened against the wood laminate.

"Holy..."

Slowly, he approached the body.

Sure, Stan had been acting strange lately. A faraway look would glaze his eyes when he was sketching and when Scarlett theatrically bent over to retrieve Harry's glasses he didn't comment like he used to.

And now it had come to this.

He couldn't see if Stan's back was moving. The fringed deerskin calamity of a jacket thrown over his shoulders obscured his view. Summoning all the courage he could muster, Ginsberg waved his hand over Stan's nose and mouth, wincing when he touched his skin (did he detect the icy touch of death?) and lifted his fingers the shocked contortion of his own face.

Hadn't he warned Stan countless times about his vices? That his crippling marijuana addiction was only a gateway to other- far more dangerous- substances?

The smug motherfucker always had an excuse.

"I come from a long line of rum-runners." he'd said.

"If I can hold my liquor I can sure as hell handle a fucking plant." he'd said.

Ginsberg rubbed the white powder between his fingers.

Here Stan lay- overdosed.

He hoped the Rizzo family wouldn't request that he make a speech at Stan's funeral.

_As a former coworker and eternal friend of the deceased, I must say I told him so._

Experimentally, he hovered a hand over Stan's mouth again only to find that he was very much alive and warm and exhaling hot breaths onto his fingers.

And that's when he saw the half empty box of powdered donuts on the floor.

"What in the obviously non-platonic hell... Ginsberg, I had no idea!"

Stan sat up, rumpled and newly awake, scrubbing a hand down his face and removing the vestiges of what was, apparently, sugar.

"Well, I uh... We're not partners- we can't sleep in here."

Stan raised an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean. Roger practically rooms here."

Stan made no movements toward the door.

"You've got to be at a meeting that commenced, I dunno, fifteen minutes ago, and Don is having a cow. They announced it over the intercom- Joan was squawking your name for eons. It's most likely some 'Project K' malarkey." He huffed, and then inhaled sharply.

He knew he was flailing.

"Hey, buddy, next time you wanna paw at my mouth, just tell me." he muttered under his breath and at last made his way toward the office's open door. "I mean, Jesus, I know I'm irresistible, but still."

Ginsberg's flat laugh sounded like calling geese.

"So, are you gonna tell me what's going on in there, or what?"

Ginsberg gestured toward the storage room turned secret lair, anticipating rejection. And for an irrational moment Stan considered telling him. He hated it when his eyes went all liquid like that.

Instead he shook him off with a laugh.

"My lips are sealed."

Ginsberg scowled.

"Yes, dearest. Even to you."

He'd call her tonight.

* * *

Most often they visited her in the subway. But flashbacks are funny like that.

Peggy lowered her head beneath the loops of the dingy safety handles. The interior of the car was a fusty smelling slice of New York with headscarved old ladies hauling mesh shopping bags on drooping sloped shoulders.

A young mother shushed a squadron of ragged brown children and cajoled them with a bottle of Nehi, wiping their sugar wet mouths with a skirt corner and regarding the gray world with tired eyes. Delivery boys and businessmen alike crowded into the cabin- all anxious to secure a spot in the steel cylinder that slugged through the belly of the city- a testament to the ingenuity of man pockmarked with dark and ancient chewing gum.

Peggy stood slouched in the express car, flat tan portfolio in one hand and pocketbook clutched to her side in the other. The soles of her feet ached in pumps that some salesman had convinced her were sensible. She shifted from the ball of one foot to the other frustrated with rebuffing Chaough's advances and sick of becoming uneasy the minute he shadowed her office's doorway.

A misspelled obscenity was scrawled in charcoal on the steel flooring. Impatiently, Peggy rubbed it out with her foot.

"Well fuck you, too."

An almost identical pair of suits from Koss's R&D department had materialized in her office that day at noon, scowling and sure as hell not caring that she only had half an hour to wolf down a sandwich. Apparently the actor that casting chose for the Caesar bit had a brother with some tie in with the mob.

"Why does it even matter? I mean what does his brother's..."

She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "...occupation have to do with him acting. He doesn't even speak!"

"Miss Olson," the first began- a fair haired waif of a man who made up for what he lacked in breadth with spectacled pretentiousness. "We over at Koss do understand that your department's been thoroughly wrung through the wringer on this account. I am, of course, referencing the 'lend me your ears' incident. But our shareholders are asking we avoid anything resembling radical political affiliation."

"And what is the Mafia, Miss Olson, if not radical." his brunette counterpart added- his lip curling into a sneer. "Surely there are other actors available."

"Not when we're set to shoot in three hours."

The blonde's eyebrows shot up like a Saturn V.

"We at Koss are also aware of the importance of our business to this firm."

A threat creased in the lines of his forehead.

"And we appreciate your cooperation in this matter, Miss Olson."

She spent the next half hour maneuvering a scowling intern into a toga and laurel wreath.

Stan phoned her a few hours afterward.

She wondered how hearing his voice could be simultaneously soothing and distressing. Crackling over the landline, his heady baritone was colored by how utterly baked he was.

The minutes after were a blur.

Stan was on the line- nonchalantly mentioning condoms and spiking her pulse- and she was knocking back a much needed Dubonnet before Chaough materialized in the glass of her office doors.

In a liquored rush she spoke- neglecting to censor herself in front of the audience she'd assumed was benign. And Chaough's tone held an obvious suggestion she had yet to soberly decipher; one which implied that her position in his firm hinged on an incredibly personal betrayal involving ketchup.

Presently, she fogged the subway's window with an exasperated sigh and adjusted her posture to reposition her pocketbook. Outside the subway tiles flashed by- an indistinct mosaic of varying stone-grays.

And then she was back again. A flurry of unsought recollection broke loose like tumbling stones from some mental precipice and lunged at her; leaving her with the memory of Stan kneeling in front of her, warm water streaming over both of them and his mouth despoiling her, gripping her hips and leaving ten oblong bruises- ten blotches of berry red that would later ripen to a black-blue- fanned across her hipbones and encircled her lower back.

The searing oblivion she'd fallen to revisited her in the rail car as an involuntary buckling of her knees that jolted the bolder of the dozing passengers into grumbling insults.

But the memory beat against the shores of her mind- the flat of Stan's tongue lashing relentlessly against her most sensitive flesh, unearthing a flood of emotions she was loathe to confront. It had been months since she'd seen his face- much less touched him- and here she stood her legs wobbling beneath her before she numbly stumbled toward the car's exit viscerally recalling the last time she felt as if she truly belonged.

Still, it had to end.

She had to cauterize this openness- the seeping affection she held toward Stan. That night spread into each fiber of her being- weakening her, and driving her wantonly toward him. Ridding herself of the physical evidence of that night had done her no good.

The reckless abandon- the first stirrings of a desire to leave everything she'd worked for and pursue him- had to end.

Inadvertently, Chaough had armed her with the ammunition she'd require to end this once and for all.

Her mind was a jumble of molten ardency and halfhearted logic.

If Peggy wasn't so lapsed a Catholic, she'd consider praying for guidance. She counted the blocks as she briskly crossed the short distance home all the while imagining the Priest's facial expression should she confess her sexual dalliances outside of those with her live-in boyfriend.

And she knew that for all of Abe's talk of revolution that he was the most staid and predictable thing in her life right now.

* * *

He'd find out what her name was later. Right now he savored the anonymity.

He wished she wouldn't sink her teeth into his earlobe though.

"Ouch."

Nonplussed, she persisted and answered in a nasally soprano, scoring her nails down the back of his flannel shirt. "Sorry."

His specifications were easy to fill- she had to have blue eyes and she had to be short.

It didn't matter that her hair was too lurid a shade of red or that she was- he winced as her stockinged heels dug into the small of his back- a bit rough in her enthusiasm.

This neighbor woman had been eyeing him for weeks- asking for cups of sugar although he'd told her multiple times the last time he'd never cooked anything but the books. He'd hoped his alluding to a fictional life of white collar crime would dissuade...

Shelly?

Mary?

Becky?

"Hey, uh, Becky."

"It's Debbie." she breathlessly replied, raising in eyebrow that came off as more rabidly zany than coquettish.

"Of course, Debbie."

Stan glanced outside of the hopper window in Debbie's bedroom, pleased to note that the sun was setting on what was the worst in a series of remarkably shitty days.

Detachedly, he unhooked her brassiere and her breasts spilled out like two raw biscuits.

Stan knew Don didn't give two fucks about anyone in the agency but himself- that The Illustrious Mr. Draper had money to burn and that he and his fellow employees were underpaid bit players in his glamorous life.

But why in the name of a vengeful and sadistic God did he have to destroy Stan's life just when he was healing?

It was the epitome of ingratitude.

First, he'd invited him to the Advertiser's Club banquet.

In and of itself this was positive. After the Project-K fiasco knowing that he had some value to the company kept him from panicking over the light bill. But when he'd finally dug the list of nominees he'd crumpled into the breastpocket of his tux and read the names his heart ricocheted from his throat to the pit of his stomach and back again.

Debbie fumbled with his pant's zipper, theatrically gnawing at her lower lip and fluttering her lashes.

"Oops." she simpered.

He quelled the urge to laugh when she brushed the back of her hand against his crotch with a flourish.

And today blue-chinned Don had burst into the Creative Lounge- looking damn Brylcreem fresh for a man who was in Detroit two hours ago- demanding a bourbon and announcing that he'd decided over drinks with Teddy Bear Chaough to merge the companies.

The same swimming lightheadedness that slammed into him then visited him now and suddenly he didn't want to do this anymore.

"I love your be-"

"Debbie, right?"

What was he supposed to say to her, really?

_"Hey, Debbie. I can't do this because I feel hollow." _

or

_"Sorry, Debbie your ankles aren't enough like hers." _

or

_"I'm going to have welts down my back for weeks, thank you."_

She sat across from him- naked to the waist and waiting- eyes wide like powdery blue saucers that sang flatly with a canned desire.

The air in her room felt thin and was lacking the swirls of dust that typically appeared and disappeared in shafts of sunlight.

He considered the bed that waited for him two doors down; saturated with the earthy smoke that held honeyed nightmares.

That way lay madness.

Who the hell was he kidding? There was a topless woman less than two feet away from him who groped at his biceps as if he were a god.

This she meant nothing just as all she's meant nothing. He hearkened for his more altruistic days when flesh was merely flesh and a memory of a tiny constellation of freckles on a bare shoulder didn't leave him hard and disconsolate.

"I think I need a little Debbie right now."

Wanly, he smiled and Debbie chuckled nervously.

Spiraling depression always made him punny.

Stan fucked Debbie to rub out the dangerous notions he'd picked up- reminding himself that a body is a body and no needs exist beyond the physical. He scrubbed himself clean of all his recollections knowing that tomorrow he'd walk into the office only to potentially come face to face with the pair of ankles he'd sworn to forget.

He and the smuggest bitch in the world were cruelly destined to meet again.

After a few hours that could only be described as uneventful, he deserted the vacant bed to search Debbie's prim and bookless bedroom for his clothes and found them- folded neatly and waiting for him on a low table. Dressing numbly, he returned to his apartment for his Playtex sketches.

He was late for work.

If seeing _her_ didn't kill him, the strain of explaining that he now worked at Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce-Cutler-Gleason-Chaoug h was likely to give him an aneurysm.


	3. Elise, Egg Salad, and Epiphany

**THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M (FOR SPICY CONTENT) AND S (FOR SAPPINESS) AND A (FOR ANGST)**

All of the characters belong to AMC.

Part One takes part just after _The Crash_ and Part Two takes place after _The Better Half._

* * *

**[1]**

Her dark eyes widened to fill the circular lenses of her purple tinted glasses completely.

"No shit, huh?"

Peggy managed a weary and tightlipped nod before her mind meandered back to the conversation at hand. A blinding flash of frustration had derailed her train of though yet again. She twisted her straw into a mangle of plastic- suppressing it.

"No shit." Joyce pursed her lips and let out a long and whistling stream of air. "Hey, you sure they didn't give you a shot up the ass too?"

"I'm positive. I was the only sane one there."

"It's because you're the woman there. They can't handle you, and you're the only thing holding them back from themselves. It's like Elise said."

She tipped back her head, reciting.

"The Lady is a humble thing, made of death and water. The fashion is to dress it plain and use the mind for border"

"I didn't get that shot. God, they were like animals."

"Still," Joyce began in her peculiar voice that was simultaneously a clip and a drawl.

"After hearing what you just described I wouldn't be so sure. What if the doc gave it to you, and whatever the hell he mixed into it made you forget, huh? Then what?"

In any other frame of mind Peggy would've countered without hesitation- she wasn't one to doubt herself. But after what she'd witnessed today, the bizarre events unfolding one after the other like some avant garde play she was too uncultured to comprehend, even she was unsure. Instead of probing further into hazy memories she diverted the flow of the conversation to Joyce's attire.

Pointedly she panned her gaze from the top of Joyce's unwashed brunette head to the soles of her sandaled feet and across every beaded necklace and piece of patterned cloth in between.

"Joyce, not you too."

"What?" She shrugged her batik covered shoulders and set the necklaces to clacking.

"It's a new look for a new day, sweetheart. Remember what Dylan said?"

The sadness borne of a friendship breaking hiatus welled in her brown eyes; and Peggy wished the two of them hadn't so easily drifted apart. Her halcyon days had ended abruptly- the responsibilities and obligations of work piled onto her in a mountain. Some part of her was lacking and By her own hand she no longer had anyone to confide in implicitly. She missed this- lunches snatched in awful cafes and conversations about the beats. But her relationship with Joyce was tied by threads to Abe and while the attachment had recently worn thin it was still there- as entangling and inescapable as cobwebs.

Joyce sat silently- cross-legged and smiling sadly-and in a cold snap of realization Peggy understood that Joyce awaited her answer.

Offering a placating smile, she imbued her voice with a perkiness she did not feel.

"The times they are a changin'."

Peggy left Joyce alone in the awful diner she'd ineffably eaten at three times that week. Her purposeful trek to the subway station required that she pass a familiar apartment.

Two weeks ago Bobby Kennedy was shot. And when the June sun had heated thousands of rose laden crosses to wilting and shrouded the city in a cloying perfume of rot and mourning Peggy had been utterly alone.

The secretaries stood huddled around Harry's TV in a sobbing cloud of handkerchiefs and the partners all turned to their drinking while she lit a rare cigarette in the creative lounge- deadpan and fighting a headache .

That day she'd carried her grief like a small and private wound; one that scabbed solidly shut until she was ensconced in the burrow of her office and the undammed sorrow beat against her in waves- in heavy wracking sobs that she muffled with her shirtsleeve until she was sure the office was empty. And when she'd lifted her throbbing head from a snotty pile of Chevy mockups to shuffle the few paces to the bathroom she stared into the mirror for a shivering moment.

She was unrecognizable.

The hair that was normally sculpted into a hairsprayed roundness was mussed into a frizzing and fluorescently backlit halo in some parts and damply flattened to her face in others, and she'd heaved a set of sore throated breaths through the red ruin of her mouth.

And She'd blinked her eyes as if testing them- eyes that were surrounded by reddish weals and swollen violet from crying- and raised a questing hand to the tiny trails left by her tears, stewing in the sorrow of a murdered hope.

Barely managing to splash a few cupped handfuls of tepid water to her face without blubbering, she'd wrung the faucet handle to a sputtering death, patted her face dry with the back of her wrists and turned on her heels. Bracing herself for a night spent avoiding a dissertation on the flawed ethics of yet another business minded administration, she grudgingly boarded the clattering tube that slugged through the bowels of the city.

* * *

Peggy shrugged off her jacket and the strap of her pocketbook slipped through her fingers.

She was greeted by humming silence.

Abe was prowling yet again and she couldn't imagine where he'd wandered or muster the strength of mind required for fruitful suspicion. Scrawled on a coffee stained Goodman's receipt was a note- written in a familiar script that bowed backward as if slanting in hurricane winds.

Left for Kennedy coverage. Be back Monday.

Police sirens and women alike wailed in a chorus just outside of the rattling window, and goosebumps of anxiety and of cooling sweat-tacked skin rose with each gusting sweep of their oscillating fan.

Relief and fear at his absence coalesced, like murky oil swirling on ice water, and her ribs ached horribly.

Alternating flashes of blue and red spattered the walls of what was supposed to be her home, and as the clamor of the upper east side swelled into a crescendo that was a shade shy of unbearable, she sidestepped the knot of extension cords that were supposed to keep the sweltering bedroom cool and stood on tiptoe to reach the into the crowning member of a precariously stacked tower of boxes.

A quick pat around the box's periphery and she'd found it.

The unmistakable pop of a gunshot rang out- startling her into a shaking vault over the hazard of the chords and onto the scratchy sofa that would press angry red lines into her raw cheeks by sunrise.

Her despondency rose on a tearful swell, and consumed with the bone-deep weariness of grief she lay supine and breathing raggedly with dogged determination to calm herself.

But the tears flowed hotly through the dam of her closed eyelids, and, as if working of their own accord, her fingers poked through a hole that had frayed its way through a softly woven field of cornflower blue.

And surrounded by a safety she knew to be a lie, she slept.

* * *

** [2]**

"What are you doing in here?"

Stan jackknifed awake- she'd caught him mid-snore and he scrubbed a hand down his face while scouring his mind for an explanation reasonable enough to justify his napping in her office.

"Uh. Well."

She stared down at him from the doorway- a chalky pallor paled her face and concern flooded him- goading him to override the rules he'd written for himself concerning Peggy. Her cheeks puckered into a queasy grimace, and though he knew it'd mean crossing the line of self preservation he'd so painstakingly drawn over these past months, he asked.

"Hey, you okay?"

She looked relieved that someone had noticed.

"Yeah."

Stan watched her sluggishly cross the short distance to her desk, dropping a number of files on her way. She stalked toward the sofa as if she hadn't seen them hit the floor, and the cushions hardly moved when she slumped into a crumpled heap on the far side. She propped her head up with her hand and grumbled a small sound of frustration.

He didn't mean to laugh aloud.

"What?"

"Nothing." Her face was devoid of makeup and the low light disguised the sallowness he'd seen in the doorway. Her lips were bare and flushed with the natural bitten pink that meant she'd been worrying at them with her teeth. He slid further up the sofa.

"It's nothing, just..."

He felt his eyes flick toward her mouth sans lipstick and was unsurprised to see her warily scoot away from him- an obvious 'no' written in the warning slant of her eyebrows.

"Don't worry. You look as sexy as a root canal right about now."

Peggy sulked and rolled those watercolor eyes.

Pleased that he once again had the upper hand, he continued.

"You look like death warmed over."

She huffily turned her back to him as if the prints she'd hung on the walls demanded her immediate attention.

"It's just that Your face is all puffy, and you've got that bizarro hair thing goin' on. You're a mess."

And then, with a softness that he was sure gave him away, "What happened?"

She didn't face him, and he focused on the white dots printed on her dress; following the pattern with his eyes to the dip of her lower back.

"You came in so fucking late that I thought you got mugged or something."

He'd overheard Moira gossiping about Peggy's 'living among scum' during a small respite in the hell that was the margarine meetings, and the fact that she hadn't told him was evidence of the intentionality of their separation.

Just when he'd given up on expecting her reply, she complied in an exhausted monotone.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

The familiar deviousness crept up. He shifted a little closer.

"I've seen some strange shit go down in the past couple of days. Are Don and Chaough still bitching you out about the price thing?"

She stiffened- a subtle rigid squaring of her shoulders- and then recovered, pushing an errant wisp of hair into submission behind her ear and at last regarding him with a deadened ice blue glance that howled through him like wind.

And he wondered if she understood the extent of his desire for her. Honestly, at some point or another he'd wrangled half of the secretarial staff into willing kisses. But he hadn't watched the column of Meredith's throat move during coffee breaks, or been distracted by the flitting motions of Clara's hands shuffling papers. He'd watched her float from Ted's office, to Don's, to her own- as distant and untouchable as a star.

Now he watched Peggy's thumb fly to her mouth, and her brow furrowed and smoothed with a secret worry as she bit off the white half-moon of a hangnail.

"Are we gonna sit on our asses all day, or are we gonna work?"

Stan sprang up from the couch in a pantomime of energy, and Peggy sat- openly annoyed with arms and ankles crossed- as he darted around the room, snatching up the files that she'd dropped and tossing them onto her lap before flopping beside her.

And forgoing his final shred of dignity, he swiveled- laying his head on top of the files and stretching to take up the full length of her couch. Before she could scramble away, he tugged his wrinkled sketchpad from where it had been wedged beneath his back and propped it against his arm.

He was pleased to note that Peggy's pallid cheeks rapidly suffused with a mottled red.

She blushed an awful lot in front of _her brother_.

Stan shifted against the fabric of her dress and snorted out a laugh when she squirmed beneath him and slapped at his forehead.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He tugged a charcoal from his pocket, and scribbled a number of axis lines before she noticed that her eyes- hooded and warily watching him from above- had propelled him into a flush of his own.

"I'm doing what I was hired to do."

He gestured with the charcoal toward the his sketchpad.

"If you keep moving, I'm gonna get these lines all wobbly, and you'll have to convince Parkay that their margarine looks best drawn melted."

At that, she stilled and Stan felt the papery touch of the files slip beneath him and catch on his hair before she straightened them on the arm of the sofa- barely scissoring her legs to shake them awake and jostling his head in the process.

"Fine."

Stan hoped the practiced rhythms of drawing would divert his attention from the warmth of her thighs in that godawful dress.

Something in her switched gears, and with a determined clearing of her throat, she began.

"So what's more important to emphasize, price or product quality? I mean, most consumers don't just reminisce about how expensive their margarine is..."

Stan tucked his chin into his chest a bit, unsure that Peggy was too consumed with demographic specifications and vertical saturation to notice the triumphant smile he was struggling to hide.

Because something about this was so very right.

* * *

She'd been so caught up in her reading that she'd almost forgotten he was there.

Aside from the light pressure of his head and the scraping whisper of that strange pencil he was silent and breathing with the steady rhythm that usually conveyed sleep. But a glance in his direction suggested otherwise.

His hand flew over the paper in a fluid dance- transforming meaningless rows of squiggles and crosshatched patches into ten or more tiny landscapes and figures. Squat and dark, the stubby pencil glided over the sketchpad- grasped snugly between his bent thumb and forefinger.

Peggy's pulse sped watching the thick joints of his hands blur with the speed and effortless skill of years of practice. And before she could stop herself, her eyes trailed to his forearms- bared by his rolled up shirtsleeves and dusted with golden hair- and then to swell of his flannel covered chest.

He looked like goddamn Davy Crockett these days.

"Why'd you stop?"

He'd turned toward her, and the unexpected eye contact affected her like a touch. Peggy felt the incriminating color rise- marking her like an unmistakable brand and she shook his head with her legs.

"Stop what? I wasn't doing anything."

"God, would you stay still? Why did you stop reading?"

His hand hovered for a moment before descending to swirl a dark sun above a patch of clouds and then shadowing in a grove of chalky black firs.

"That's not margarine."

"It's called a warm-up." He tilted back his head- pressing into the space between her thighs in the process.

"You've been 'warming up' for twenty minutes."

He continued dotting the landscape with short blunt strokes.

"Hey, both of us know no one's really working today, or any day for that matter. Besides, I've got six-hundred plus ideas to my name that I can get down at home whenever I want. If I see anything even related to margarine for the next six months I'm gonna vomit outta my ears. I'm a butter man for life now. "

"Well, if you're so productive, then what's the point of even coming to work?"

She was miffed now- the telltale shrilling of her voice and the frustration that constantly simmered beneath tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she scowled down at him.

She had accepted his obvious breach of her personal space as a challenge, and in accepting it she'd hoped to prove that these odd things he did to throw her off didn't really affect her. She'd handle this..._ situation_ as she'd handled many others- efficiently and without the type of regret that showed. Without thinking, she touched him- just the slightest brush of her fingers pushing the hair back from his forehead.

Immediately, he tensed before softening and a frisson of power bolted through Peggy- a lightning thrill at his dropped pencil and mumbled litany of curses.

"Fuck."

Stan made a show of searching for the lost pencil, and Peggy took the opportunity to stretch her legs. She studied the pattern of her dress- following the perimeter of each of the polka-dots with her finger.

The leaden warmth of his head was gone and rapidly cooling and in the paradox of the century she wanted him again.

Although he had the ability to hurt her horribly; although she liked him too much and the severed end of her last relationship was a still fresh and stinging pain, she wanted him.

"Found it." Stan bent to pull the fragment of what was once a pencil from beneath the couch- his shirt straining over the span of his shoulders,and a dark heat speared through her at the memory of him in this precise position.

One time was all she needed.

She was well acquainted the roll and tense of that body- an image she'd summoned some nights when she was alone and work had been hell and home was hell with Abe in it.

Stan glanced up at her- a smile in his eyes and she was stricken wordless; but only for a moment.

"Are you hungry?"

He straightened then- tall and smiling and roughly lovely.

"Yeah."

Her heart beat a fluttering tattoo in her throat.

"Stay here. I'll get us something. What do you want?"

_Honestly?_

"I'll just eat whatever you find. No weird stuff though."

He disappeared through the doorway and Peggy was positive that she wasn't the one with the great ass.

* * *

He'd asked her if she wanted the egg salad sandwich he'd stolen from the break room before launching into a story.

Stan didn't know why he needed to tell her these things, but the soul-sapping loneliness of the city got to him every one in a while and, excepting an instance that seemed like a century ago, she'd never let him down.

"She was one of those Swiss Miss girls- blond with the pigtails and all- and leggy and smooth and tan as a pagan- wife material, you know."

Peggy flinched at the gruff and appreciative noise Stan made.

"Then why'd you leave her?"

He nudged her typewriter with the foot he'd perched on her desk and heaved a shallow sigh.

"Her dad found out somehow."

"How old was she?"

"Seventeen."

Stan paused for a beat while Peggy most likely remembered the young subject of Cutler's lecherous voyeurism

"How old were you?"

"I was fourteen when I met her, and fifteen when... You fill in the rest."

Fiddling with the wadded up paper from Clara's destroyed sandwich, he asked her- wheedling.

"So, how old were you? Come on, who was lucky enough to pop Miss Olson's cherry?"

She laughed at the question- hoping to shoo him away from it.

"You know I'm good at keeping secrets- unlike some people."

Peggy murmured at a low volume that conveyed her discomfort.

"Well, I was a hell of a lot older than fifteen."

For the first time, she was the one telling.

"And I was stupid and young, and because I wasn't careful a lot of pain came out of it- for me and for others around me."

And then, with the added strength of momentum, "But I learned from it. I guess. I learned that its important to be cautious about these things, you know? You can't rush into situations without thinking. There are all of these negative externalities to consider."

"You think about this too much."

"No. I don't think about it enough. That's the problem."

Stan stared at her from his vantage point behind her desk. She was cross-legged and barefoot- a relaxed tangle of legs he'd never seen her twisted into before.

Two doors down, the sun was setting.

"What about us?"

Relaxation forgotten, she tensed like a bowstring drawn taut.

"What _about_ us?"

"Well..."

The spiel he'd constantly rehearsed evaporated.

"I don't think there's any point denying what happened."

"Neither do I, but..."

She trailed off for a millisecond to calm the quaver in her voice.

"It would never work. I'm your boss for Pete's sake."

"Colleague."

"Whatever."

"You work for me."

"With you."

"Okay, sure, _with_ me. At the end of the day It's a conflict of interest ,"

"Bullshit."

He was muttering in the direction of the door now, and Peggy was a still blob in his peripheral vision.

He knew she'd be angry regardless of what he said next, and satisfied that he'd struck a nerve he continued.

"You were worried about Abe, right?"

Her foot tapped into the silence.

"It isn't really my place to say this,"

Since when had that stopped him?

"But that guy doesn't give a rat's ass about you; havin' you live in that old rattletrap apartment. Shit, you're likely to get yourself shanked or something."

Stan imposed his voice with an authority he knew he didn't have.

"You should get rid of him."

She sat stick straight- staring forward into nothing- and He expected her to leave the room or to supply some easily deflected retort.

Instead She buried her face in her hands. And in two steps Stan was by her side- one hand on her convulsing shoulders and the other slid between her hands to cup her face.

He'd watched her slog through the day of a certain senator's death only to cry alone in this broom closet of an office, and a bevy of suppressed emotions tore into him with the pain of a mending bone re-broken.

Only after he'd tipped up her chin and smoothed his thumb over a surprisingly dry cheek did he realize she was laughing; a heavy mirthless sound that rang like a shrill and broken bell.

Without warning, she raised her hand to cover his- the swift enveloping softness leveled him to his knees like a blow. And with an easy bend of her waist she brushed her lips against his in a fleeting mockery of a kiss.

Slowly, deliberately, she pressed the plush of her mouth to his- descending and retreating four times before the welcome intrusion of her tongue against his own sent a rush of blood swiftly downward, and that quickly he was ready- anticipating reenacting memories of touching the petal-soft swell of her breasts and the softer bed of curls between her thighs.

Her soft cry startled him and he drifted back to reality just long enough to feel her hands trail from where they bracketed his face to his chest. Ghosting her fingers over the lowest reaches of his belly, she worked to free him in a clack of brass before giving up and firmly taking hold of him through his pants with a boldness that hinted of experience.

And she lifted her arm to curl around his neck with questing fingers that teased him, with damp eyelashes that stroked fire onto his throat- all with a shyness that made each ticking second of silence unbearable pain. A sudden and distracting pressure tickled his chest through the barrier of his shirt and he glanced down only to see Peggy's lips pressed there, and the tremor that wracked his body escaped as a sputtering groan before he smoothed his hands from where they'd migrated to her hips, skimming them over the fabric that separated his fingers from her ribs.

But when the blunt scrape of her fingernails at last made contact with his skin he jumped back as if he'd been scalded- fumbling to rearrange the disarray of his pants and struggling to breathe past the thundering of his heart.

"Peggy. I just, _fuck_... Sorry."

Unable to look at her, he fled.

* * *

Days later, she'd called him- afraid- and he'd sent her to bed.

Debbie had stirred behind him at a strategic distance- pausing her rattling snores just long enough for him to finish an unexpected phone call.

Although she claimed she'd make it worth his while, he declined.

Stan stared at the ceiling for an interminable amount of time before the unwelcome surprise of a foot jabbing at his calf jarred him from his thoughts and the snoring ground to an abrupt halt.

"Who was that?"

"It's nothing. Go to sleep."

He'd wanted to palm off their chemistry as the venting of the pent up stress of a workday or the result of some choice bud working it's magic.

But he'd smoked hundreds of times since then, and after-work tumbles with Debbie just left him unsated and annoyed.

When Cutler's maniac doctor had jabbed him with that needle and his world was reduced to flashing prisms of color and a lingering malaise at injustice, he'd come to her, weary of fighting himself and confused at what he'd wanted to say.

After several cathartic bouts of vomiting, he'd been glad she had turned him away. Because something odd and protective had built up in him, and his plans didn't involve fucking her on the conference room floor with Ginsberg two doors down.

He couldn't have her like that- not in that nine-to-five prison.

He couldn't speak to her about it because they'd end up doing a hell of a lot more than speaking.

And he sure as hell couldn't explain that he'd somehow fallen in love with his boss.

He saw past the businesslike smiles and the plaster mask of indifference that routinely covered her constantly altering expressions to a deep sadness; a sadness he intended to fix.

And he'd denied her joking advances at three AM because if he'd come over to find her alone he wouldn't want to leave her. He'd want to stay, and he wanted to give something of himself that he wasn't sure she'd want.

He couldn't begin to explain that his coming over would result in the same rawness he'd palmed off as the result of intoxication- and he couldn't trust himself to fall back on the lie that this meant nothing when each of a hundred kisses would be a silent vow and every hushed whisper would mean I love you.

* * *

**A/N**: Elise Cowen was a hella rad member of the Beat movement. Also sorry for all of the typos.


End file.
